The presumed need for higher military
budgets is a major argument on which defence industries flourish. Why
are alarm bells on the military budgets tolled so loud?
It is hard to miss that the West is the
dominant party in military expenditure. It spends more than the rest
of the world together. The expenditures of Russia collapsed after the
Cold War. Because the category 'Rest of the world' (in tables 1a and
1b) also includes major western allies such as Australia,
Japan and South Korea (all three among the fifteen largest military
spenders) the balance is shifted even more to 'west'. In response to
critizism a debate started if one has to look differently to the
budgets of adversaries.
Washington takes by far the (although
slightly shrinking) lion share of the global military budget.
Therefor the debate is centered around the Pentagon. In May 2018,
during a hearing in the Senate Defense Subcommittee Senator Dick
Durbin (D) addressed the following question to general Riley present
at the meeting: “You tell us that one of our biggest threats,
greatest enemies, is Russia; turns out we read recently that Russia
spends about $80 billion a year on its military (…) So let me get
this straight: We’re spending $600, $700 billion against an enemy
that’s spending $80 billion. Why is this even a contest?”
Expenditures of the allies of
the US were not even needed to make this argument.
General Riley
couldn't deny the figures, but doubted the comparison. “The cost
of Russian soldiers or Chinese soldiers is a tiny fraction. So we
would have to normalize the data in order to compare apples to apples
and oranges to oranges (…) take out the military personnel accounts
for both the Chinese, Russians, and/or the US, and then compare the
investment costs.”
Sydney Freedberg
Jr, journalist at Breaking Defense took the challenge and worked out the suggested calculation. He came
to the conclusion that: “Whatever methodology you use, Russian
spending remains a fraction of US.” China however, Freedberg
stated, outspends the US by over 20 per cent.
Strangely enough
while Freedberg left out US military wages in his comparison (table
2) there is no column for China without personnel cost. Although the
cost for personnel
in China counts
for one
third of the military expenditures and while the size of the
Chinese armed forces are rapidly shrinking, the level of technology
is increasing. Chinese wages in general are rising, technological
skilled personnel is even more expensive, so the costs of the
military man or woman will rise too. Analists expect the portion of
the Chinese Defence budget going to personnel to grow.
The
use of Purchasing
Power Parity (PPP) exchange rates in
this comparison is also problematic. The PPP creates the
possibility to compare the value of a
currency in different countries.
Mandy
Smithberger at the Center for Defense
Information at the Project On Government Oversight notes in an
article titled 'Coocking the budget numbers' that
PPP is designed to reflect the purchasing power for goods and
services that are representative of spending patterns in each
country, that is, primarily for civilian goods and services. Military
expenditure is used to purchase goods and services that are not
typical of national consumption patterns. You do not have to
go deeper than wikipedia
to read they also do not consider the different quality of goods
among countries. What is the cost of a Russian weapon and and how to
compare it on quality with a similar European version of the same
weapon? China paid US$
1.4 billion for two air defence surface vessels of comparable
quality to Dutch LC-frigates valued at $ 816 million and thus a comparable cost also.
Freedbergs
work adds to the reasons for the cynical saying: there are three
kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. In the debate on
military expenditures (ME) graphs are often used to solidify the
positions of opponents of military growth and by those
supporting the military establishment. To see what is left out or
what is included, what is or are the sources, is the craft of reading
them. Here graphs are outright used as “another excuse for why
taxpayers must spend more money on the defense budget. Now the Army’s
Chief of Staff, General Mark Milley, is trying to cook the books to
claim U.S. defense spending is barely keeping up with China’s
military spending,” as Mandy
Smithberger wrote. She concludes “even cooking the numbers
the United States still spends more than China and Russia,
and at best it’s dishonest to suggest otherwise.”
Retired four-star admiral James
Stavridis boiled Freedberg's maths even further down: “To
compare our soldiers with Chinese or Russian soldiers (or sailors) is
like comparing not apples and oranges but apples and hubcaps [wheel
covers]. You get what you pay for, and we are spending
a lot more — and getting good (and necessary) value for our
money.”
Written for Stop Wapenhandel
Written for Stop Wapenhandel
